Pollard Theatre has opened its 24th season with Mary Chase's comedy "Harvey," winner of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize. You may be wondering why Pollard opted to begin the season with this particular theatrical chestnut. If you see the production, you may still be wondering.

Pulitzer notwithstanding, "Harvey" is a pretty silly story. For anyone who has been in solitary confinement for the past 60 years, or has not seen the 1950 film version starring James Stewart, "Harvey" concerns Elwood P. Dowd, a disarmingly nice man who spends most of his time going around to bars with his "pooka," a 6-foot-1-and-a-half-inch invisible white rabbit named Harvey, much to the consternation of his widowed sister, Veta Louise Simmons, and her daughter, Myrtle Mae.

Veta tries to check Dowd into Chumley's Rest, a sanitarium where the psychiatrists are crazier than the patients, an old clich